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Tour

Your tour begins at the former head of the Cannonball Trail. Allegedly used by the Continental Army as a means to avoid British troops in the valley during the Revolutionary War, the route’s origins lie in the clandestine transportation of cannonballs forged at the Pompton Furnace. This furnace, located in the south of town at the Pompton Lake dam, was one of few industries that the village of Pompton developed in the time before it incorporated. It wasn’t surpassed in importance until the advent of the enterprise on whose property you are about to trespass.

The trailhead is located at the dead end of Barbara Drive. There will be a gravel lot on your left, and right past it will be a small trail, fenced off. If you look toward the dead end, you should see a rusty basketball hoop nailed to a telephone pole. Walk into the woods past this and you’ll see an end to the chain link fence before the railroad tracks. Walk past the fence and up the small embankment. This was DuPont’s primary form of rail access, leading to the New York, Susquehanna, and Western Railway. Walk along the tracks to your left, and down the other side to the clearing containing the skeletons of two children’s soccer goals.

This is the former DuPont Field, which was leased to the town for use as a recreational soccer pitch. The clearing will likely be unmowed, in which case there’s usually a split in the tall grass curving towards the left. The lease was revoked by DuPont in 2014, vaguely citing “vandalism.” This severed legal access to the Cannonball Trail from within Pompton Lakes, necessitating a two-mile detour to access the same trail, but the continued use of the old trailhead is evident by the path trodden through the field. Here and there, you’ll see clusters of blue and yellow pipes sticking out of the ground. These are groundwater

monitoring wells, which will become a familiar sight on DuPont property, which features hundreds of them. Some stick out eerily among the ruins better reclaimed by nature. Others abut concrete foundations or bridges, providing evidence of the magnitude of the damage scientifically as the ruins do spatially.

Walk across the field toward the hills. Once you enter the forest, you’re off of DuPont’s land, safely and legally within Ramapo Mountain State Forest. The trail worn into the field continues up the hillside.